4 Things You Shouldn't Do With the Internet

The Internet's great. You should use it for lots of things. It's also terrible. You shouldn't use it for the following things.

#4. Try to Launch Your Music Career (As a Child)

YouTube

On your mark. Get set. Real talk.

When I was 12 years old, I built miniature versions of everyone I knew in my middle school out of clay. All together, I had maybe 150 tiny figurines (some students, some teachers), all arranged on a little table in my bedroom (what I referred to at the time as "my lab"). Late at night, I'd steal my parents' VHS camera (note to the children who read this column: VHS tapes are what we used to have instead of DVDs, and VHS cameras are what we used to use to make movies instead of digital cameras, iPads and phones. Also, stop reading this column, it is not for children), and I would make short stop-motion movies with me and my massive cast of clay schoolmates. I was basically doing a one-man version of Saturday Night Live as understood by a child; I'd have me and all of my friends play different characters and shoot a bunch of sketches, including my best attempt at making a Weekend Update that tied into what happened at school that week. Why did I make a little clay Daniel and little clay Daniel's best friends dress up in costumes to play different characters when I could have just built characters out of clay? I don't know. No one will ever know.

Photos.comI was REALLY into clay, is the point.

I'd also write songs in my lab, songs I would share with no one. There was one song about school being out for the summer, and "I'm So Happy, Someone Slap Me" was both the title and the only lyrics in the song, repeated over and over again. I also wrote a song about what I wanted to be when I grew up. There's a really cool key change in the song that would be enough to make it my best work, but it also featured the lyric "I don't wanna be a crocodile, I just wanna make you smile," which I guess cancels out whatever goodwill I'd earned with the frankly inspired key change.

Why bring all of this up? Because, every night before I go to sleep, I thank God or Aliens or Neil Tyson or Luck or the Spectacular Randomness of the Universe that YouTube didn't exist when I was a kid.

See, when I was a stupid kid, making terrible midnight sketches or embarrassing music videos in my lab, I just recorded it onto a VHS tape. And then I'd stick the tape in my TV, watch it, conclude "Nope, there's nothing wrong with that; that's as good as anything I've ever seen on television, I'm gonna be famous," and move on. I'd film my SNL knockoff sketches one week and then erase them the next week to make room for my new SNL knockoff sketches. Then I'd erase that a week later and replace it with a song about my dog, or a song about how I wanted the girl who sat in front of me in English class to notice me, or a song about professional wrestler Sting, and how cool it would be if the two of us solved mysteries and were friends.

Stingin' the Blues is what our album would be.

But if YouTube had been around and as stupidly easy to use in 1996 as it is today, those videos would be uploaded straight to the Internet for absolutely everyone to see, because as a kid, you have no objectivity whatsoever. Or taste. Or skills. Nothing. Children are terrible.

Unfortunately, YouTube is here now, for everyone, forever. Which is how a video like this can hit the Internet.

YouTube

The video linked above is of a young kid, Max Harris, performing an original song of his called "High." He is, I'm assuming, 13 years old. I assume 13 because everything about this music video -- the lyrics, the dancing, the deep and thoughtful staring into the camera -- just screams "I am 13 and this is what I think a serious adult song looks and sounds like."

YouTube

The video is destined to become Internet famous. It hits that perfect intersection of "alarming terribleness" and "total earnestness." There's even a part where the poor kid whispers about how he's on a sinking ship, and he cries into the camera with the kind of shameless, childlike conviction that I will never again feel about anything. There's no way he doesn't become the next Internet "thing." Reddit will end up making image macros featuring Max's likeness. People will do soulful, hipstery piano covers of it, like they did for Rebecca Black's song. Someone will Auto-Tune it (or, more likely, a hundred freaking people will Auto-Tune it). This kid, whether he knows it or not, is now a meme. Forever.

YouTube

I have a hard time watching that video, with its "artistic" low-angle shots and its ... you know, all that other stuff. Not because I'm laughing at or mocking the kid, but because I was that kid. Sure, my songs never featured intense whispering, my dance style was less "hip-gyration" and more "robot who can jump," and my songs were largely about corn dogs and not the pursuit of getting high (he means emotionally), but other than that, the only difference between this kid and me is that I didn't have YouTube or anything like it. And I guess it's impossible for me to know for sure, but I'm almost positive that my life is better because of that.

YouTubeThis could have been me.

YouTube gave children an audience, but no one ever told those children, "Hey, you're not going to make a decent piece of original work for over a decade, so please keep the creative stuff to yourself and your small group of friends (clay or otherwise)." Little kids all over the Internet are putting up videos of themselves singing. Some of them will never break 25 views. Some of them will be shockingly great. And some of them, like poor Max's, are headed straight for Internet stardom, and not the good kind. That's got to be terrible for a kid, right? Being a 13-year-old kid is already kind of awful on its own; no child anywhere should have to deal with becoming an insulting Internet meme. The Internet hasn't been around long enough for us to figure out what that does to a child's psyche, but I can't imagine it's great.

#3. Ignore It

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Have you guys ever heard of the actor Brian Presley? He's got a few IMDb credits under his belt, and he's a pretty good-looking guy with a relatively well-balanced life. He's got a wife and a kid, apparently. And a few days ago, he attempted to cheat on his wife with a famous supermodel on a plane. Who tweeted the entire gross ordeal.

Twitter

Model Melissa Stetten live-tweeted every single detail to her 22,000+ followers. This includes some of Brian's sleazier bits ...

Twitter

... plus just some general embarrassing dumb-guy stuff.

Twitter

My favorite (least favorite?) part is when Brian (who told Melissa he only wore a wedding ring because he "liked it") tells Melissa that the two of them sitting together on a plane must be "divine interception." There's so much wrapped up in that phrase. He has communicated A) that he thinks God put them together for a reason; B) that he thinks that reason is fucking on a plane; and C) that he's a total idiot. "Divine interception" isn't a thing, or, at least, not yet, but it will be once my movie about Eddie Murphy dying and then returning to Earth as an angel who has to help his old football team of scrappy underdogs win the Super Bowl gets funding.

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I'm sure Brian was going through some ... things. Apparently, he's supposed to be clean and sober, but was clearly drinking on this flight. It sounds like he isn't in a great place right now, so he doesn't need some other shitty Internet writer making stupid jokes about his life while it falls apart.

But I will say that the Internet's been around for sort of a while now. The first time a celebrity's sex tape or embarrassing email leaked to the Internet, every other celebrity should have immediately thought, "Ah, yes, the Internet, big opportunity to publicly embarrass myself, every second of every day. Probably best if I just shut up, forever." We KNOW how the Internet works, so if you're trying to commit adultery with someone who is clearly not interested who keeps typing on their phone and even takes a picture of you, it's safe to assume that you're being Internetted. Gawker will write three different stories if Johnny Depp takes a shit; you'd better assume that someone will cover your public adultery.